Six
Cooper and Landon walked briskly to the parking lot. There was no question Landon was jittery. “Stop looking over your shoulder,” Cooper said. “I’ll hear them if they’re coming.”
“What if you don’t?”
“I will. Where’s your car?”
“Behind the school, in the student lot.”
“And I suppose they have cars there, too?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s my truck,” he said, pointing. “I’m going to drive you to your car, then I’ll follow you out of here. I’ll follow you home, if you want me to, but I’d rather go somewhere we can get food. I’m not kidding, I’m starving.”
“And if I don’t feel like doing that?” Landon asked.
Cooper didn’t say anything. He waited until they got to the truck and said, “Get in.” Once they were both in the cab, Cooper turned toward Landon. “Here’s the deal. I know what happened tonight. I get it. The kid’s an ass, a bully without a conscience, and he seems to have a posse. I’ve been there, believe me. We’re gonna have a talk about your options—either over food or in your living room.”
“My sister is there!” he said. “I don’t need her all into this. She will seriously make it worse. Even worse than you have!”
He lifted eyebrows. “Did she go to the game?”
“She was there. But she takes her own car in case I have someplace to go. I never do, but in case.”
Cooper started the truck. “Call her. Tell her you’re going out for a burger and you won’t be late.”
“Can’t we do this some other time?” he said. “Like when the whole town isn’t packed into the joints? Just let me out at my truck and I’ll—”
“Call her. Drive to Cliffhanger’s and I’ll follow you. I doubt the whole booster club will be hanging out there. And we both know where most of the team will be. On the beach.”
Landon sighed, giving in. “Turn left into the parking lot. That’s my truck, the green Mazda. I’ll call my sister from the truck....”
“Make it a quick call, will you? I’m sure those boys are pissed off and trying to decide what to do to you next.”
He started to get out of the truck, then looked back at Cooper. “What if you are some kind of pervert?”
“I just saved your life. Now I’m going to feed you and give you a few pointers. Don’t make me regret it.”
“That’s what perverts do,” Landon said.
Cooper leaned toward him. “Perverts don’t let you drive yourself. You’re making me tired. After we talk about assholes like Jag, we’ll talk about perverts. Now go!”
* * *
Mac drove his aunt Lou and the younger kids home after the game. Once he got them all inside, he said, “I’m going to take a run through town, make sure all is quiet....”
“It won’t be quiet after a win like that,” Lou said as she reached into the refrigerator for a diet cola. “Don’t go sitting out on the hill, spying on the beach.”
“I don’t do that,” he said to her back.
“Yes, you do,” she said, leaving the kitchen.
He stood there in indecision for a moment. Then he reached into the refrigerator, grabbed two beers and left the house. The night was clear and cold and there were a million stars. He only drove about ten blocks, to a neighborhood perched on the hill right above the main street. He parked and walked up the steps to the porch and knocked, hanging on to the beers in one hand.
Gina answered in her plaid winter jammies and heavy socks. “What are you doing here?”
He gave a shrug. “I’m in search of adult company and I’ve had enough of Lou. I’m sick of her bossing me around.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Don’t go sit on the hill and spy on the beach.’” He held a beer toward her. “Come on out.”
She grabbed her jacket off the hook inside the door and slipped into it, turned off the porch light and then accepted the beer. “What were you going to do?” she asked.
“Sit on the hill and spy on the beach,” he said.
She laughed at him. “I guess you think no one notices you there.” She sat on the top step and twisted the cap off the beer. “Just what do you think is going to happen out there?”
He sat beside her. He twisted off his own cap. “I’ll know it when I see it,” he said, taking a pull on the beer. “My relationship with Lou...it’s getting to me. We’re like an old married couple.”
“Well, at least you recruited her,” Gina said. “And why wouldn’t you be like that? You’ve been together longer than most people our age have been married. Don’t be stupid. Don’t complain. You’d be lost without her.”
“I’d be lost without her,” he agreed. “Maybe that’s what annoys me. It’s unnatural.”
“Don’t cry to me. I live with my mother.”
“Here’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he said. “Are you going to work at the diner for the rest of your life?”
“Probably. Why?”
“Aren’t you almost done with your degree?”
“Almost. I even have some credits toward a master’s. I’m a real speed demon. A short seventeen years to my high school diploma and almost a degree.”
“Shouldn’t you be looking for something better? Where you don’t have to wipe up after people?”
“Seriously?” she asked. “Are you seriously asking me that?”
“Hey, I have no degree at all. No almost about it.”
“Okay, first of all, Stu takes very good care of me. I make more money at the diner than I’d make a lot of other places. I’ve become indispensable to him, so he has to keep me happy. And I can do everything I need to do—go to school part-time, take care of Ashley and keep up with all her activities, help my mom in the deli, get the days off I need as long as everything else is covered. Second, my degree will be in social work. I’d have to work for the county. The pay is miserable.”
“But there’s benefits,” he said.
“I have benefits. Maybe not the best benefits, but...”
“Retirement?” he asked.
“A little,” she said. “Not that I expect to retire. What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know,” he said, slumping a little bit. “None of my business, really, but sometimes I think you work too hard.”
“You’re right about that,” she said. “But I have a good gig going, Mac. One kid with a granny backup, a decent if not extraordinary education, some benefits, a boss who lets me take any time I need.” She took a drink of her beer. “This was a good idea, a beer. Thanks. I could use better advice, though,” she added.
He chuckled. “I’ll remember that.”
“See that you do. It’s really beautiful tonight. You don’t notice things like that when you’re in the middle of a wild and crazy football game.”
“Have you met the new doctor yet?”
She shook her head. “Have you?”
“Briefly. He stopped in to say hello before he started ripping the boards off the windows next door. His wife is dead, he’s got a couple of little kids and he brought a babysitter with him. Very pretty.”
She sighed. “That’s an au pair, Mac. She’s from Mexico. In exchange for room and board, an education and, with luck, citizenship, she’s a full-time nanny. And she’s about twelve.”
“No...”
“Okay, she’s nineteen. And I hear the doctor is a hottie.”
“Where’d you hear that?” he asked.
She peered at him in the dark and lifted one brow. “Where do you think?”
“Ray Anne?” he asked.
“She’s keeping pretty close tabs on him.”
Mac grinned. “I think you stay at the diner because you have access to all the gossip there.”
She grinned back. “Just like at the cop shop.”
“True,” he said. He was quiet for a long moment. “Another year and our girls will graduate. Go to college.”
“Are you mourning that already?” she asked him.
“Ha! I’m counting the days! Think they’ll go to the same school?”
“No telling,” she said. “That depends on whether Eve wants to follow Ashley, who will definitely follow Downy.”
As Mac knew, Ashley had been dating her boyfriend, Downy, since he was a senior at Thunder Point High. Downy was now in his first year at State. In fact, Mac had been in his first year at State when he got his high school girlfriend knocked up. He shuddered. “Doesn’t that worry you?” he asked.
“No,” Gina said. “Downy is a good boy, and Ash is an ambitious girl. So far they seem to make a good team. They don’t want to get tripped up now.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said. He took a breath. “And I hope Eve doesn’t have a serious boyfriend until she’s thirty.”
“Why?” Gina asked. “Because that’s the way she’ll be most happy?”
Mac just looked at her. Gina was so pretty, so smart. If it weren’t for all the complications in their lives, all the responsibilities, now would be a logical time to pull her closer, kiss her in a way that left her trembling. But he wouldn’t. “That’s the thing,” he said. “You and I both know that the thing that makes us most happy at sixteen doesn’t work out to be so smart at thirty.”
“Or thirty-five?” she asked.
“Or thirty-five,” he confirmed.
After a long silence she said, very softly, “One of these days, Mac, you’re going to discover you have no regrets.”
“Huh?” he questioned.
“Nothing. I have to get to bed. I work early and I’m freezing. Done with that beer? Want me to pitch it for you?”
“Uh, yeah.” He handed it over. “Thanks. And thanks for keeping me company for a while.”
“Anytime. Buddy.”
* * *
Cooper called another one right—the town was packed with vehicles and people spilling out onto the sidewalks around fast-food restaurants and the diner, but Cliffhanger’s wasn’t busy. In fact, though it was barely after nine, Cooper wondered if they were thinking of closing. He went straight to the bar, “Looks kind of quiet,” he said to Cliff. “There’s time for a couple of burgers, right?”
Landon, wearing his letter jacket, walked in behind him. Now that they were in a well-lit restaurant, Cooper noticed the bruise on Landon’s cheek and wondered where that had come from.
“Come on, man,” Cliff said good-naturedly. “I want to find out about the game. Word is those Badgers finally got what was coming to ’em.”
“I can help with that,” Cooper said. He dropped an arm casually around Landon’s shoulders. “I promised the quarterback a burger.”
Cliff broke into a grin. “You got it.”
“And give me a draft—I’ve had a hard night.”
Landon shot him a look. “You’ve had a hard night?”
“My pleasure. Dupre? For you?”
“Draft,” he said.
Cliff smiled. “Nice try. Second choice?”
“All right. Coke.”
“Grab a table, boys. I’ll put in your order and get your drinks.”
Cooper pointed to a table, knowing a minor couldn’t sit up at the bar. When they were seated, Landon said, “That could’ve been a mistake. We might draw a crowd.”
“That’s okay. We just have to get a couple of things straight. It won’t take long. That kid, Jag, asked you to throw a game to get him back to first string, right? And when you said no, he threatened you. If I hadn’t come along, he was going to beat you up. You can’t let it go, Landon. Trust me.”
“I’ll handle it....”
“Maybe you would—eventually. Listen, this kind of bullying isn’t a first. It also isn’t rare, which ought to disgust the whole human race. In every junior high and high school, and sometimes even elementary school, there’s some idiot who anoints himself king. He gathers up some plebes who are either as mean as he is or stupid enough to think if they stick with the self-proclaimed leader, they won’t get hurt. Then they search out their victims and make a lifestyle out of working ’em over. Terrible things come out of it. At least you were important enough to be threatened, because you’re actually a threat, but that doesn’t make it easier. I have one question. Did you ever think about it? Just doing what he wanted you to do?”
Landon looked shocked. He shook his head. “You say you get it, but you don’t. I wasn’t the only one they wanted to cheat, I was just the only one they promised to beat up. That fumble? Right before the end of the first half? You think that guy lost control of the ball? He’d be one of the plebes. He dropped that ball for Morrison.”
Cooper couldn’t help it, he grinned. Jag Morrison had himself a gang that worked hard for him, even at their own expense. But instead of letting the fumble go—maybe letting the game go—Landon stepped up, recovered the ball and ran it. He brought his A-game.
“This isn’t just about me,” Landon continued. “You spend ten minutes in the halls at school and you get how much it means to them, beating those Badgers.”
“Even though you could get hurt,” Cooper said. It was not a question.
“You think the only way I might get hurt is being jumped in the parking lot or dragged under the bleachers? I have to play against my own team and the other team—they are not about protecting their quarterback.”
“Are you saying all of them are in it?”
“Nah, just a few. But sometimes the right few. At least I know which ones they are.”
Cooper nodded at Landon’s face. “And the bruise?”
Landon ducked briefly. “I walked into a door.”
Cooper was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Right.”
The drinks came and Cooper was thinking, damn kid has no idea what kind of athletic skill that takes—trying to score with a good defense and with your own team working against you. Where the hell was the coach?
Cliff put down the drinks and pulled up a chair. “Your burgers are coming, so while we wait, why don’t you tell me about the game?”
Cooper watched as Landon gave Cliff a play-by-play. His own nieces and nephews were not yet teenagers, though they were certainly getting there too quickly. Besides his friends’ kids, whom he knew very casually, this might be his first experience with a young man of sixteen. And it was most definitely his first experience with a kid like Landon.
Landon played it straight, excusing the fumbles, lack of defense and missed passes and dismissing his own plays, which were nothing short of heroic. He was fast as lightning and could jump over fallen opponents. He said things like, “That was a lucky break,” and “I bet that doesn’t happen twice.” He never suggested members of his own team worked against him or even that what he’d managed had taken talent.
Their food arrived and Cliff stuck around. They lingered over burgers and football talk for more than an hour and Cooper was glad to see Landon getting the attention he deserved, praise he didn’t get much of from his team.
When they were in the parking lot, Landon said, “You had tips?”
Cooper just laughed. “Not on playing football, that’s for sure. You’ve got that down. It’s getting late...”
“Late? How old are you?” Landon asked with a hint of humor.
“Right now I feel real old. You’ll probably have that dog out for a walk this weekend. And I’ll probably be around that old shack on the beach.”
* * *
Gina and Mac had been good friends since the time their daughters had hooked up as best friends when they were twelve. The first time he showed up at Gina’s house to check out her surroundings before letting Eve spend the night with her new best friend, Gina had fallen for him. She never let on, of course. They had a couple of teenage girls to watch over. But they always ended up sitting together at town events, school functions, that sort of thing. There was the occasional beer on her front porch or even at Cliff’s, but the best was morning coffee at the diner when it wasn’t busy. She could set her watch by him. At around ten o’clock, barring pressing police work, he’d come into the diner. Six days a week. Fishermen were out at dawn or before; the lunch crowd didn’t show until eleven-thirty. Between breakfast and lunch was when they’d catch up on gossip, scheduling and kids’ activities. Mac and Gina, Aunt Lou and Carrie backed each other up when it came to carpooling and chaperoning. Between all of them, plus teachers and coaches, they ran herd on these girls and Mac’s other two younger kids. They were not going to let Eve and Ashley fall victim to the kind of mistakes their mothers had made.
Their rapport was good. Gina could feel the sexual tension building in the light touch of hands, the smile or laugh, the conversation about things in their lives that had nothing to do with their daughters.
After about a year of relying on each other, trading news and confidences, there had been a kiss; a breathless embrace. They pushed apart desperately but reluctantly. And yet there was a second time, lasting a bit longer, that felt even more passionate to Gina. She had been in the ecstasy of expectation. She had felt for some time that they were more than buddies.
But at their morning coffee after that second embrace and kiss, Mac had confronted it. He seemed remorseful. “We can’t let this happen,” he had told her. “We have daughters who are best friends, a lot of responsibilities, people depending on us. Carrie and Lou...and I have a whole town, not to mention two more children...”
She remembered clearly—and with embarrassment—that her mouth had hung open. After a year of sharing details of their lives, some of which she considered deeply personal, and after two hot and meaningful kisses, he was running for his life?
“Relationships are fragile,” he said. “We’ve both been through it. We can’t experiment with this...this getting closer. If it didn’t work, look how many people would be affected. Mostly, there’s you and I. We’ve already had our guts ripped out, right?”
She was stunned silent for a moment. She was so offended. Hurt. “Right,” she finally said. “Dr. Phil.”
“Gina, you’re special. Damn, I just want to do the right thing.”
He didn’t seem to realize he’d just drawn blood with his gentlemanly comment. She sensed that her instinctive response—Then throw me down and have your amazing way with me—might scare him even more.
So, apparently the one thing they did not have in common was readiness. After becoming an unmarried teenage mother, Gina hadn’t actually dated again until Ashley was in school. In the ten years since then there hadn’t been very many dates and only one guy had been semiserious. Emphasis on the semi.
“Your friendship is important to me,” he told her. “I need it.”
“Sure. Your friendship is important to me, too,” she had said. “But I didn’t kiss you. I kissed you back. And I wanted to. So understand something, Mac. If you ever do anything like that again, you better mean it. And you better not turn and run.”
After a long silence, he said, “Understood.”
She pulled back then, gathered in her emotions and desires like poker chips she’d just won, so he wouldn’t know. Because she didn’t want him if he didn’t want her. She hadn’t needed Dr. Phil to tell her relationships were risks. That was the point, wasn’t it? She wasn’t fifteen anymore. She no longer risked her heart without weighing all the facts. She knew him well enough and knew enough about him to realize he’d be worth it.
But she wouldn’t have him unless he also thought that of her.
So for years they’d continued as friends, had midmorning coffee together, sat together at games and watched their daughters cheer, worked as a team at too many pancake breakfasts and school carnivals to count, and remained best friends and confidants without any pesky kissing. Or fondling. Or anything.
But she still felt that lilt in her chest when he walked in the door. She tried to tamp it down, but her blue eyes glowed. He sat down at the counter, diner empty, and she filled his cup with a smile. “I don’t think this town is going to get over last night’s game anytime soon,” he said.
“I know I won’t. I’m hoarse. I could hardly sleep. I’m still vibrating under the skin. Thanks for bringing over a beer last night—that was nice of you.”
“Eve didn’t get in until twelve forty-five.”
“After the biggest game of the year? Of five years? What an impossible child. I think you should ground her for life. Or just execute her.”
Mac smiled that lazy one-sided smile. “I didn’t say a word.”
“But you were waiting up,” she said with a lift of her light brown eyebrows over twinkling eyes.
“Well, that’s a given.”
She knew that he’d want to be sure Eve came home in shape—not traumatized, compromised, inebriated, using, holding, et cetera. The cop in him gave him the experience to make very good judgments, but it was the father in him who cared about the child. A couple of times he’d asked Gina for advice, because teenage girls don’t have to be in crisis to come home a mess. A failed date, a falling-out with a girlfriend, a disappointment—any number of dramas could look like trouble. Sometimes it took a woman, a mother, to be able to separate the real trouble from its look-alike. She found herself honored that he’d talk to her about those things even though he had Aunt Lou at home.
When Gina was a pregnant teenager and, later, as the single mother of a little one, she’d have traded so much for any father figure for her baby. Now, with Ashley a teenager, she was proud of the parent she’d become. But she’d still give the moon for her daughter to have a father like Mac.
“Ashley was in by midnight, but that’s because she brought her boyfriend with her. I tried to stay awake and listen to what was going on in the living room, but I didn’t last long.”
“That’s getting really serious, isn’t it?” Mac asked. “Ashley and Downy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You talk to her about that?” he asked.
“I talked to both of them,” she said. “I can’t control their emotions but I can damn sure give them the facts and have a discussion about the consequences.”
“I hope we don’t end up doing some damage in the other direction,” he said, lifting his cup. “We could end up with two lonely old maids on our hands. I want our girls to have full lives, I just don’t want them too full, too soon.”
Gina poured herself a cup of coffee. “You mean end up as two lonely old maids like us?”
“I’d pay any amount of money for a few hours of loneliness,” he said.
“We’ll get a break soon,” she said. “A day or two between football, hockey and basketball.”
“We should go see a movie,” he said. “We haven’t done that in a while.”
This was not an overture—they’d gone to a few movies over the past few years. Despite the fact that neither of them ever saw other people, nothing romantic happened between them.
“Maybe,” she said. “Not a bloody one.”
“What’s the point, then,” he joked. “We have to see something we can’t experience in real life. Maybe a sci-fi, then. Or horror movie. Not some chick thing all about true love....”
“Trust me, Mac. I don’t experience that in real life.”
Silence hung out there and she thought, Don’t you dare do this again! Unless you mean it!
“Fine,” he said. “Once we get through football, you can pick the movie.”